


The Groom of Magic

by Snowingiron



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Magical Smut, Masturbation, Mild Smut, One Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:57:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowingiron/pseuds/Snowingiron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So when he leaned against that wall in the rain and reached for the vine he finally understood that he wasn’t just creating and using magic, he was making love to it. He loved it as he loved Arabella, perhaps with a more feral note to it. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>There's a reason why Jonathan uses magic with such ease. It's a dance, it's courting, and Jonathan is the groom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Groom of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, it all started with this gif:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> and my tag of "#He looks like he's making out with magic" and I'm fucking right, okay? Anyway, my friends agreed and I wrote... a thing. I must say, it's not my greatest work, but I don't know how to improve it right now. English is not my first language, please bear with me

The fact that Jonathan had never thought about magic before, not even in his childhood, felt strange to him now. It hadn’t been part of his life until that day when he bought two spells from a raggedy man and felt the touch of magic for the first time. He could feel it like an actual touch but not only on his skin, it was underneath too, like it was reaching every part of him. It tingled in his fingers and on his scalp in a way that made his eyes flutter. It wasn’t a surprise to him when he realised he was hard. He didn’t want to impose on Arabella with it, she was sleeping sound next to him while he couldn’t stop moving and twitching.

 

He didn’t want to wake her so he quietly crawled out of his bed, only wearing his nightshirt, and… didn’t even know where to go. He sneaked through the house like he was looking for something and stopped at his study eventually, surrounded by books, just normal books, but it seemed the right kind of place. He couldn’t even sit down, he just leaned against his working desk and lifted the nightshirt, taking himself in hand. He tried to remember the things he had felt while casting the spell and it didn’t take long for him to come with a choked cry and his head thrown back. He still trembled with the aftershock a few minutes later and when he was finally able to return to bed, Arabella was still asleep.

 

What followed was a little bit of a dissapointment. He tried to stick to the two spells for a while, repeated them over and over again, but it became less and less satisfying. It was frustrating and he shattered one of Arabella’s favourite mirrors. It felt off, wrong, it was not enough.

 

“What is it, Jonathan?”

 

Arabella was holding his hand and he loved her, but in that moment she wasn’t enough either. He kissed her fingers and smiled.

 

“Nothing, my love. The spells just don’t work as well as they did before.”

 

She smiled and shook her head with a fond expression on her face.

 

“Magic… Real magic can be found everywhere. It surrounds us at all times, everything god has given us. It’s inside all of us, if we know where to look for. Real magic is nothing one can learn, I’m afraid. It will come to you naturally.”

 

Jonathan stared at her until she left him with a kiss on his cheek. She had said it to take his mind off it, to make him forget about it once and for all. But it had quite the opposite effect when he threw the spells into the fire place and watched it burn to ashes. Tiny sparks erupted from it and he kneeled on the floor, squinting at it. He couldn’t see anything special, it was just a normal fire, but when he closed his eyes his breath hitched. He could hear it. He could hear the music of magic, made of fog and crystal clear sounds that surrounded everyone and everything. Arabella was right. It was nothing one could learn.

 

When he opened his eyes again the flames were dancing on his fingertips, like he was fuel and magic was the flame. It consumed him whole until he couldn’t feel himself anymore and he closed his eyes with a moan. That was what he had been looking for and even though Arabella had been so critical she couldn’t help but smile at the new tricks he was doing every day from then on. He let rotten flowers bloom before her eyes but when she asked how he did it he couldn’t tell. He never could.

 

“Perhaps my husband is mightier than I thought… Perhaps I was wrong.”

 

“No,” he whispered between kisses that night. “you were right.”

 

_It’s like music playing at the back of one’s head. You understand what I mean, Mr Norrell? Hearing it for the very first time and yet one, somehow, simply knows what the following note will be._

 

_Yes. Yes, I do understand what you mean._

 

But when Mr. Norrell buried him in books he didn’t think that man understood him at all. Jonathan  complied, slightly insecure about his own capabilities, it couldn’t hurt to try real magic books, right? Maybe the spells on some piece of paper weren’t real magic after all. However, when he used the magic out of a book it felt like an already baked pie he was throwing at enemies. It wasn’t his own. He had made horses out of horse sand, he had raised water from the well like a thunderstorm, it was his creation, his connection to magic.

 

And then all the books but one were gone.

 

So when he leaned against that wall in the rain and reached for the vine he finally understood that he wasn’t just creating and using magic, he was making love to it. He loved it as he loved Arabella, perhaps with a more feral note to it. He squeezed the vine in his hand and felt his hips bucking when the magic came rushing back to him like a wave, a music that felt new everytime but he always knew how the song ended. It was ridiculous, people were dying, yet he pressed against the brick wall like it was his lover and almost came in his trousers. While magic exausted others and made them weak, it gave him strength. He had evolved from something lesser and it hadn’t occured to him that it might be something bad. He looked at his trembling hands and realised that it was too late to turn back.

 

_The Raven King.. I’ve seen statues of him in the North and engravings in books. I never saw a painting before._

 

_This is a picture of everything that has disgraced and crippled English magic for the last 300 years._

 

Jonathan still stared at the painting when Mr. Norrell was gone. He stepped closer until he could examine every inch of it. He felt the book sliding from his grip, until it hit the floor with an echoing sound. The Raven King, he seemed to be the embodiment of magic, at least the kind of magic Jonathan always used, not the one from the books. He felt drawn to the painting and flattered himself with the idea that the feeling might be mutual. It seemed to come closer and he reached out with his hand until he could touch it with his fingertips. He gasped at the jolt of electricity that raced through his body and jumped back.

 

His nerves still tingled when he returned that night but he couldn’t concentrate on anything else which was still a very foreign feeling. Back in his youth and until he bought that very first spell nothing had been able to catch his interest for long. No sport and no form of sience ever spoke and sung to him the way magic did.

 

It took some time until he realised something about Childermass. The shape of his face, his ever so shady posture and his dark eyes, they were so familiar and at first he had thought of Arabella, but when he caught the man without his hair tie, long strands of dark hair falling into his face, he realised that he thought of someone else entirely. It was as if the painting of The Raven King stood right in front of him, but this time he could touch and feel it.

 

It was merely a glance and a silent question until he was kissing Childermass, hands twisted in the dark locks. With Arabella everything was tender and intense, which he loved, but the burning sensation that magic showered him with, he could feel again now. It was Childermass who pressed Jonathan against the wall, not even commenting on the sudden interest, he just took every bits of affection he could find. It didn’t matter who was willing to give it.

 

But everything Jonathan did these days was born from selfish reasons or he did it for Arabella, and she was gone now. She was gone and Jonathan bit at the other man’s lips until he moaned. Their bodies were pressed against each others, Jonathan’s hands were clawing at his back and when a hand pushed between them he let it happen. It felt good, it felt right.

 

Then Childermass buried his face in Jonathan’s neck, hips grinding and hands twisting, and Jonathan could feel the magic pouring from his pores like sweat. He shivered at the sensation and he came with a long groan when he understood that Childermass had magic too. It was what made Jonathan lick his lips, he could feel it and taste it and maybe Childermass heard the magic too, pressing his ear against mirrors to catch an echo of the symphony.

 

Jonathan only invinted him to his bed one more time, to feel him whole, to be buried beneath him with his face pressed against a soft pillow. Every muscle was sore and ached nicely but when Childermass kissed him goodbye in the dark, he was almost glad. They wouldn’t see each other again in that way, because he didn’t love Childermass and Childermass didn’t love him. Not like Arabella, not like magic did. He watched his Raven King leave and closed his eyes.

 

_Thank you, sir. Thank you. But Mr. Norrell and I are not done with each other yet. And besides, I think I would make a very bad pupil. Worse, even, than you._  
  


In the end it seemed right for him to be swallowed by magic, however dark it was. It wasn’t bright like the sun but it burned just as much… Magic wasn’t good or evil, the people who used it were. Jonathan didn’t feel like either of it, but wherever he was now, it was a joining, becoming one, and that was everything magic ever was to him, something Norrell never truly understood, until the end. It was about giving and taking.

 

_Foolish boy_ , he thought to himself. If magic loved him back just as much, why would it ever let him go again?


End file.
